1 Information for Upgrading From Previous Asterisk Releases
2 =========================================================
4 Build Process (configure script):
6 Asterisk now uses an autoconf-generated configuration script to learn how it
7 should build itself for your system. As it is a standard script, running:
11 will show you all the options available. This script can be used to tell the
12 build process what libraries you have on your system (if it cannot find them
13 automatically), which libraries you wish to have ignored even though they may
16 You must run the configure script before Asterisk will build, although it will
17 attempt to automatically run it for you with no options specified; for most
18 users, that will result in a similar build to what they would have had before
19 the configure script was added to the build process (except for having to run
20 'make' again after the configure script is run). Note that the configure script
21 does NOT need to be re-run just to rebuild Asterisk; you only need to re-run it
22 when your system configuration changes or you wish to build Asterisk with
25 Build Process (module selection):
27 The Asterisk source tree now includes a basic module selection and build option
28 selection tool called 'menuselect'. Run 'make menuselect' to make your choices.
29 In this tool, you can disable building of modules that you don't care about,
30 turn on/off global options for the build and see which modules will not
31 (and cannot) be built because your system does not have the required external
32 dependencies installed.
34 The resulting file from menuselect is called 'menuselect.makeopts'. Note that
35 the resulting menuselect.makeopts file generally contains which modules *not*
36 to build. The modules listed in this file indicate which modules have unmet
37 dependencies, a present conflict, or have been disabled by the user in the
38 menuselect interface. Compiler Flags can also be set in the menuselect
39 interface. In this case, the resulting file contains which CFLAGS are in use,
40 not which ones are not in use.
42 If you would like to save your choices and have them applied against all
43 builds, the file can be copied to '~/.asterisk.makeopts' or
44 '/etc/asterisk.makeopts'.
46 Build Process (Makefile targets):
48 The 'valgrind' and 'dont-optimize' targets have been removed; their functionality
49 is available by enabling the DONT_OPTIMIZE setting in the 'Compiler Flags' menu
50 in the menuselect tool.
52 It is now possible to run most make targets against a single subdirectory; from
53 the top level directory, for example, 'make channels' will run 'make all' in the
54 'channels' subdirectory. This also is true for 'clean', 'distclean' and 'depend'.
56 Sound (prompt) and Music On Hold files:
58 Beginning with Asterisk 1.4, the sound files and music on hold files supplied for
59 use with Asterisk have been replaced with new versions produced from high quality
60 master recordings, and are available in three languages (English, French and
61 Spanish) and in five formats (WAV (uncompressed), mu-Law, a-Law, GSM and G.729).
62 In addition, the music on hold files provided by FreePlay Music are now available
63 in the same five formats, but no longer available in MP3 format.
65 The Asterisk 1.4 tarball packages will only include English prompts in GSM format,
66 (as were supplied with previous releases) and the FreePlay MOH files in WAV format.
67 All of the other variations can be installed by running 'make menuselect' and
68 selecting the packages you wish to install; when you run 'make install', those
69 packages will be downloaded and installed along with the standard files included
72 If for some reason you expect to not have Internet access at the time you will be
73 running 'make install', you can make your package selections using menuselect and
74 then run 'make sounds' to download (only) the sound packages; this will leave the
75 sound packages in the 'sounds' subdirectory to be used later during installation.
77 WARNING: Asterisk 1.4 supports a new layout for sound files in multiple languages;
78 instead of the alternate-language files being stored in subdirectories underneath
79 the existing files (for French, that would be digits/fr, letters/fr, phonetic/fr,
80 etc.) the new layout creates one directory under /var/lib/asterisk/sounds for the
81 language itself, then places all the sound files for that language under that
82 directory and its subdirectories. This is the layout that will be created if you
83 select non-English languages to be installed via menuselect, HOWEVER Asterisk does
84 not default to this layout and will not find the files in the places it expects them
85 to be. If you wish to use this layout, make sure you put 'languageprefix=yes' in your
86 /etc/asterisk/asterisk.conf file, so that Asterisk will know how the files were
91 * The (very old and undocumented) ability to use BYEXTENSION for dialing
92 instead of ${EXTEN} has been removed.
94 * Builtin (res_features) transfer functionality attempts to use the context
95 defined in TRANSFER_CONTEXT variable of the transferer channel first. If
96 not set, it uses the transferee variable. If not set in any channel, it will
97 attempt to use the last non macro context. If not possible, it will default
98 to the current context.
100 * The autofallthrough setting introduced in Asterisk 1.2 now defaults to 'yes';
101 if your dialplan relies on the ability to 'run off the end' of an extension
102 and wait for a new extension without using WaitExten() to accomplish that,
103 you will need set autofallthrough to 'no' in your extensions.conf file.
105 Command Line Interface:
107 * 'show channels concise', designed to be used by applications that will parse
108 its output, previously used ':' characters to separate fields. However, some
109 of those fields can easily contain that character, making the output not
110 parseable. The delimiter has been changed to '!'.
114 * In previous Asterisk releases, many applications would jump to priority n+101
115 to indicate some kind of status or error condition. This functionality was
116 marked deprecated in Asterisk 1.2. An option to disable it was provided with
117 the default value set to 'on'. The default value for the global priority
118 jumping option is now 'off'.
120 * The applications Cut, Sort, DBGet, DBPut, SetCIDNum, SetCIDName, SetRDNIS,
121 AbsoluteTimeout, DigitTimeout, ResponseTimeout, SetLanguage, GetGroupCount,
122 and GetGroupMatchCount were all deprecated in version 1.2, and therefore have
123 been removed in this version. You should use the equivalent dialplan
124 function in places where you have previously used one of these applications.
126 * The application SetGlobalVar has been deprecated. You should replace uses
127 of this application with the following combination of Set and GLOBAL():
128 Set(GLOBAL(name)=value). You may also access global variables exclusively by
129 using the GLOBAL() dialplan function, instead of relying on variable
130 interpolation falling back to globals when no channel variable is set.
132 * The application SetVar has been renamed to Set. The syntax SetVar was marked
133 deprecated in version 1.2 and is no longer recognized in this version. The
134 use of Set with multiple argument pairs has also been deprecated. Please
135 separate each name/value pair into its own dialplan line.
137 * app_read has been updated to use the newer options codes, using "skip" or
138 "noanswer" will not work. Use s or n. Also there is a new feature i, for
139 using indication tones, so typing in skip would give you unexpected results.
141 * OSPAuth is added to authenticate OSP tokens in in_bound call setup messages.
143 * The CONNECT event in the queue_log from app_queue now has a second field
144 in addition to the holdtime field. It contains the unique ID of the
145 queue member channel that is taking the call. This is useful when trying
146 to link recording filenames back to a particular call from the queue.
148 * The old/current behavior of app_queue has a serial type behavior
149 in that the queue will make all waiting callers wait in the queue
150 even if there is more than one available member ready to take
151 calls until the head caller is connected with the member they
152 were trying to get to. The next waiting caller in line then
153 becomes the head caller, and they are then connected with the
154 next available member and all available members and waiting callers
155 waits while this happens. This cycle continues until there are
156 no more available members or waiting callers, whichever comes first.
157 The new behavior, enabled by setting autofill=yes in queues.conf
158 either at the [general] level to default for all queues or
159 to set on a per-queue level, makes sure that when the waiting
160 callers are connecting with available members in a parallel fashion
161 until there are no more available members or no more waiting callers,
162 whichever comes first. This is probably more along the lines of how
163 one would expect a queue should work and in most cases, you will want
164 to enable this new behavior. If you do not specify or comment out this
165 option, it will default to "no" to keep backward compatability with the old
168 * Queues depend on the channel driver reporting the proper state
169 for each member of the queue. To get proper signalling on
170 queue members that use the SIP channel driver, you need to
171 enable a call limit (could be set to a high value so it
172 is not put into action) and also make sure that both inbound
173 and outbound calls are accounted for.
185 * The app_queue application now has the ability to use MixMonitor to
186 record conversations queue members are having with queue callers. Please
187 see configs/queues.conf.sample for more information on this option.
189 * The app_queue application strategy called 'roundrobin' has been deprecated
190 for this release. Users are encouraged to use 'rrmemory' instead, since it
191 provides more 'true' round-robin call delivery. For the Asterisk 1.6 release,
192 'rrmemory' will be renamed 'roundrobin'.
194 * app_meetme: The 'm' option (monitor) is renamed to 'l' (listen only), and
195 the 'm' option now provides the functionality of "initially muted".
196 In practice, most existing dialplans using the 'm' flag should not notice
197 any difference, unless the keypad menu is enabled, allowing the user
198 to unmute themsleves.
200 * ast_play_and_record would attempt to cancel the recording if a DTMF
201 '0' was received. This behavior was not documented in most of the
202 applications that used ast_play_and_record and the return codes from
203 ast_play_and_record weren't checked for properly.
204 ast_play_and_record has been changed so that '0' no longer cancels a
205 recording. If you want to allow DTMF digits to cancel an
206 in-progress recording use ast_play_and_record_full which allows you
207 to specify which DTMF digits can be used to accept a recording and
208 which digits can be used to cancel a recording.
210 * ast_app_messagecount has been renamed to ast_app_inboxcount. There is now a
211 new ast_app_messagecount function which takes a single context/mailbox/folder
212 mailbox specification and returns the message count for that folder only.
213 This addresses the deficiency of not being able to count the number of
214 messages in folders other than INBOX and Old.
216 * The exit behavior of the AGI applications has changed. Previously, when
217 a connection to an AGI server failed, the application would cause the channel
218 to immediately stop dialplan execution and hangup. Now, the only time that
219 the AGI applications will cause the channel to stop dialplan execution is
220 when the channel itself requests hangup. The AGI applications now set an
221 AGISTATUS variable which will allow you to find out whether running the AGI
222 was successful or not.
224 Previously, there was no way to handle the case where Asterisk was unable to
225 locally execute an AGI script for some reason. In this case, dialplan
226 execution will continue as it did before, but the AGISTATUS variable will be
229 A locally executed AGI script can now exit with a non-zero exit code and this
230 failure will be detected by Asterisk. If an AGI script exits with a non-zero
231 exit code, the AGISTATUS variable will be set to "FAILURE" as opposed to
234 * app_voicemail: The ODBC_STORAGE capability now requires the extended table format
235 previously used only by EXTENDED_ODBC_STORAGE. This means that you will need to update
236 your table format using the schema provided in doc/odbcstorage.txt
238 * app_waitforsilence: Fixes have been made to this application which changes the
239 default behavior with how quickly it returns. You can maintain "old-style" behavior
240 with the addition/use of a third "timeout" parameter.
241 Please consult the application documentation and make changes to your dialplan
246 * After executing the 'status' manager action, the "Status" manager events
247 included the header "CallerID:" which was actually only the CallerID number,
248 and not the full CallerID string. This header has been renamed to
249 "CallerIDNum". For compatibility purposes, the CallerID parameter will remain
250 until after the release of 1.4, when it will be removed. Please use the time
251 during the 1.4 release to make this transition.
253 * The AgentConnect event now has an additional field called "BridgedChannel"
254 which contains the unique ID of the queue member channel that is taking the
255 call. This is useful when trying to link recording filenames back to
256 a particular call from the queue.
258 * app_userevent has been modified to always send Event: UserEvent with the
259 additional header UserEvent: <userspec>. Also, the Channel and UniqueID
260 headers are not automatically sent, unless you specify them as separate
261 arguments. Please see the application help for the new syntax.
263 * app_meetme: Mute and Unmute events are now reported via the Manager API.
264 Native Manager API commands MeetMeMute and MeetMeUnmute are provided, which
265 are easier to use than "Action Command:". The MeetMeStopTalking event has
266 also been deprecated in favor of the already existing MeetmeTalking event
267 with a "Status" of "on" or "off" added.
269 * OriginateFailure and OriginateSuccess events were replaced by event
270 OriginateResponse with a header named "Response" to indicate success or
275 * The builtin variables ${CALLERID}, ${CALLERIDNAME}, ${CALLERIDNUM},
276 ${CALLERANI}, ${DNID}, ${RDNIS}, ${DATETIME}, ${TIMESTAMP}, ${ACCOUNTCODE},
277 and ${LANGUAGE} have all been deprecated in favor of their related dialplan
278 functions. You are encouraged to move towards the associated dialplan
279 function, as these variables will be removed in a future release.
281 * The CDR-CSV variables uniqueid, userfield, and basing time on GMT are now
282 adjustable from cdr.conf, instead of recompiling.
284 * OSP applications exports several new variables, ${OSPINHANDLE},
285 ${OSPOUTHANDLE}, ${OSPINTOKEN}, ${OSPOUTTOKEN}, ${OSPCALLING},
286 ${OSPINTIMELIMIT}, and ${OSPOUTTIMELIMIT}
288 * Builtin transfer functionality sets the variable ${TRANSFERERNAME} in the new
289 created channel. This variables holds the channel name of the transferer.
291 * The dial plan variable PRI_CAUSE will be removed from future versions
293 It is replaced by adding a cause value to the hangup() application.
297 * The function ${CHECK_MD5()} has been deprecated in favor of using an
298 expression: $[${MD5(<string>)} = ${saved_md5}].
300 * The 'builtin' functions that used to be combined in pbx_functions.so are
301 now built as separate modules. If you are not using 'autoload=yes' in your
302 modules.conf file then you will need to explicitly load the modules that
303 contain the functions you want to use.
305 * The ENUMLOOKUP() function with the 'c' option (for counting the number of
306 records), but the lookup fails to match any records, the returned value will
307 now be "0" instead of blank.
309 * The REALTIME() function is now available in version 1.4 and app_realtime has
310 been deprecated in favor of the new function. app_realtime will be removed
311 completely with the version 1.6 release so please take the time between
312 releases to make any necessary changes
314 * The QUEUEAGENTCOUNT() function has been deprecated in favor of
315 QUEUE_MEMBER_COUNT().
319 * It is possible that previous configurations depended on the order in which
320 peers and users were specified in iax.conf for forcing the order in which
321 chan_iax2 matched against them. This behavior is going away and is considered
322 deprecated in this version. Avoid having ambiguous peer and user entries and
323 to make things easy on yourself, always set the "username" option for users
324 so that the remote end can match on that exactly instead of trying to infer
325 which user you want based on host.
327 If you would like to go ahead and use the new behavior which doesn't use the
328 order in the config file to influence matching order, then change the
329 MAX_PEER_BUCKETS define in chan_iax2.c to a value greater than one. An
330 example is provided there. By changing this, you will get *much* better
331 performance on systems that do a lot of peer and user lookups as they will be
332 stored in memory in a much more efficient manner.
334 * The "mailboxdetail" option has been deprecated. Previously, if this option
335 was not enabled, the 2 byte MSGCOUNT information element would be set to all
336 1's to indicate there there is some number of messages waiting. With this
337 option enabled, the number of new messages were placed in one byte and the
338 number of old messages are placed in the other. This is now the default
339 (and the only) behavior.
343 * The "incominglimit" setting is replaced by the "call-limit" setting in
346 * OSP support code is removed from SIP channel to OSP applications. ospauth
347 option in sip.conf is removed to osp.conf as authpolicy. allowguest option
348 in sip.conf cannot be set as osp anymore.
350 * The Asterisk RTP stack has been changed in regards to RFC2833 reception
351 and transmission. Packets will now be sent with proper duration instead of all
352 at once. If you are receiving calls from a pre-1.4 Asterisk installation you
353 will want to turn on the rfc2833compensate option. Without this option your
354 DTMF reception may act poorly.
356 * The $SIPUSERAGENT dialplan variable is deprecated and will be removed
357 in coming versions of Asterisk. Please use the dialplan function
358 SIPCHANINFO(useragent) instead.
360 * The ALERT_INFO dialplan variable is deprecated and will be removed
361 in coming versions of Asterisk. Please use the dialplan application
362 sipaddheader() to add the "Alert-Info" header to the outbound invite.
364 * The "canreinvite" option has changed. canreinvite=yes used to disable
365 re-invites if you had NAT=yes. In 1.4, you need to set canreinvite=nonat
366 to disable re-invites when NAT=yes. This is propably what you want.
367 The settings are now: "yes", "no", "nonat", "update". Please consult
368 sip.conf.sample for detailed information.
372 * Support for MFC/R2 has been removed, as it has not been functional for some
373 time and it has no maintainer.
377 * Callback mode (AgentCallbackLogin) is now deprecated, since the entire function
378 it provided can be done using dialplan logic, without requiring additional
379 channel and module locks (which frequently caused deadlocks). An example of
380 how to do this using AEL dialplan is in doc/queues-with-callback-members.txt.
384 * It has been determined that previous versions of Asterisk used the wrong codeword
385 packing order for G726-32 data. This version supports both available packing orders,
386 and can transcode between them. It also now selects the proper order when
387 negotiating with a SIP peer based on the codec name supplied in the SDP. However,
388 there are existing devices that improperly request one order and then use another;
389 Sipura and Grandstream ATAs are known to do this, and there may be others. To
390 be able to continue to use these devices with this version of Asterisk and the
391 G726-32 codec, a configuration parameter called 'g726nonstandard' has been added
392 to sip.conf, so that Asterisk can use the packing order expected by the device (even
393 though it requested a different order). In addition, the internal format number for
394 G726-32 has been changed, and the old number is now assigned to AAL2-G726-32. The
395 result of this is that this version of Asterisk will be able to interoperate over
396 IAX2 with older versions of Asterisk, as long as this version is told to allow
397 'g726aal2' instead of 'g726' as the codec for the call.
401 * On BSD systems, the installation directories have changed to more "FreeBSDish"
402 directories. On startup, Asterisk will look for the main configuration in
403 /usr/local/etc/asterisk/asterisk.conf
404 If you have an old installation, you might want to remove the binaries and
405 move the configuration files to the new locations. The following directories
407 ASTLIBDIR /usr/local/lib/asterisk
408 ASTVARLIBDIR /usr/local/share/asterisk
409 ASTETCDIR /usr/local/etc/asterisk
410 ASTBINDIR /usr/local/bin/asterisk
411 ASTSBINDIR /usr/local/sbin/asterisk
415 * The music on hold handling has been changed in some significant ways in hopes
416 to make it work in a way that is much less confusing to users. Behavior will
417 not change if the same configuration is used from older versions of Asterisk.
418 However, there are some new configuration options that will make things work
419 in a way that makes more sense.
421 Previously, many of the channel drivers had an option called "musicclass" or
422 something similar. This option set what music on hold class this channel
423 would *hear* when put on hold. Some people expected (with good reason) that
424 this option was to configure what music on hold class to play when putting
425 the bridged channel on hold. This option has now been deprecated.
427 Two new music on hold related configuration options for channel drivers have
428 been introduced. Some channel drivers support both options, some just one,
429 and some support neither of them. Check the sample configuration files to see
430 which options apply to which channel driver.
432 The "mohsuggest" option specifies which music on hold class to suggest to the
433 bridged channel when putting them on hold. The only way that this class can
434 be overridden is if the bridged channel has a specific music class set that
435 was done in the dialplan using Set(CHANNEL(musicclass)=something).
437 The "mohinterpret" option is similar to the old "musicclass" option. It
438 specifies which music on hold class this channel would like to listen to when
439 put on hold. This music class is only effective if this channel has no music
440 class set on it from the dialplan and the bridged channel putting this one on
441 hold had no "mohsuggest" setting.
443 The IAX2 and Zap channel drivers have an additional feature for the
444 "mohinterpret" option. If this option is set to "passthrough", then these
445 channel drivers will pass through the HOLD message in signalling instead of
446 starting music on hold on the channel. An example for how this would be
447 useful is in an enterprise network of Asterisk servers. When one phone on one
448 server puts a phone on a different server on hold, the remote server will be
449 responsible for playing the hold music to its local phone that was put on
450 hold instead of the far end server across the network playing the music.
454 * The behavior of the "clid" field of the CDR has always been that it will
455 contain the callerid ANI if it is set, or the callerid number if ANI was not
456 set. When using the "callerid" option for various channel drivers, some
457 would set ANI and some would not. This has been cleared up so that all
458 channel drivers set ANI. If you would like to change the callerid number
459 on the channel from the dialplan and have that change also show up in the
460 CDR, then you *must* set CALLERID(ANI) as well as CALLERID(num).
464 * There are some API functions that were not previously prefixed with the 'ast_'
465 prefix but now are; these include the ADSI, ODBC and AGI interfaces. If you
466 have a module that uses the services provided by res_adsi, res_odbc, or
467 res_agi, you will need to add ast_ prefixes to the functions that you call
472 * format_wav: The GAIN preprocessor definition has been changed from 2 to 0
473 in Asterisk 1.4. This change was made in response to user complaints of
474 choppiness or the clipping of loud signal peaks. The GAIN preprocessor
475 definition will be retained in Asterisk 1.4, but will be removed in a
476 future release. The use of GAIN for the increasing of voicemail message
477 volume should use the 'volgain' option in voicemail.conf